[Multilingual Monday] Cherokee immersion
Above: a US map in Cherokee made for immersion classes. Some of the names are obviously transliterations - ᎢᏂᏗᏰᎾ, "Inidiyena", is obviously one. But where did ᏧᏂᎦᏔᏙᏅᏙᏗ, "Junigatadonvdodi" for Kanas come from??
So fairly recently there has been a push within the Cherokee nation to push for Cherokee immersion in their schools. Over the last several years teachers have been trained, and materials have been created (as they had not existed beforehand). This means that maps, textbooks, and charts have all been created specifically for teaching school subjects in a language that has been considered endangered, with a large amount of speakers middle-aged to elderly.
This push to realise this dream of Cherokee being a full living vibrant strong language is one I find alluring and exciting. This article describes the lack of materials, requiring people to create them; here, they discuss translating Charlotte's Web into Cherokee. With excitement, Renissa Walker, the manager of the Kituwah Preservation and Education Program, said, "We are honored and look forward to more and bigger projects for our students. We are very hopeful that the next project will be gaining the movie rights to dub over the English for the children!"
And I would love to see this -- I would love to see works being translated into the language, as you would other languages of the world.
And that is perhaps the biggest problem; there are no movies, television shows, albums, novels, or many other things in Tsalagi. Even the immersion school stops at sixth grade, and then places to speak or use the language are no longer there, as stated in this article (which, interestingly, can be read into Cherokee by clicking the ᏣᎳᎩ link in the upper left). There is a definite "then what?" after immersion, and I'm not sure how to answer that, as use has dwindled so much. I fear the benefits of immersion being negated by this fact.